Microsoft Releases PowerShell Script Browser 1.0

Microsoft has released Script Browser 1.0, an add-in search tool that works with PowerShell's integrated scripting environment.

Script Browser 1.0 was announced on Sunday, but it apparently was published by Microsoft earlier, on April 14, according to Microsoft's download page. The add-in is designed to help IT pros better locate PowerShell scripts, even when users are offline. It can sort through more than 9,000 script samples housed at the Microsoft Script Center.

This version of Script Browser has an experimental feature called "Script Analyzer," which checks a script against Microsoft's best-practices standards. It will highlight the scripts that fail to comply with those best practices, according to a Microsoft PowerShell blog description.

The Script Analyzer feature was a suggestion from Microsoft's Most Valuable Professionals community. They also suggested features such as script preview and offline search, which Microsoft added in this release.

In the near future, Microsoft may incorporate Bing code search in Script Browser. It's also looking at enabling enterprise search for scripts.

The Script Browser 1.0 add-in works with Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 machines at minimum. It also requires .NET Framework 4.5 or later versions plus Windows Management Framework 3.0 or later versions.